Divorce Proceedings Can Stall Operations, Distract Key Employees, and Require Expensive Outside Counsel. Here’s How Good Planning Can Mitigate the Costs. Solid legal counsel, pre- and post-nuptial agreements, shareholder agreements, confidentiality, and structured settlements can all ease the strain on a small business during a divorce proceeding, explains Jennifer A. Brand at the Fox Small Business Center. ...

Key Strategies Include Building Competitive Intelligence, Reading Trade Media, Innovation and Response to Trends,  and More.   Bruce Marcus at CPA Trendlines offers a guide to trend-spotting for accountants: ...

Survey Shows Half of Respondents are Considering Cloud Solutions, and Three Quarters Believe Cloud Strategies Will Be Important for Their Firm's Success Within 12-18 Months Christine Camara at Accounting Web reports that a majority of top finance executives in US companies foresee Cloud computing lowering costs and helping their businesses succeed in the near future, according to a new survey - The Business ...

In Berquist v. Commissioner, Judge Swift Finds a Company’s Pending Liquidation is Relevant and Foreseeable. Brand valuation is becoming an ever more critical business as intangible assets are increasingly being recognized as highly valued property, writes Sophie Roberts in Intellectual Property.  Consider: A vast majority of work your business is already doing today almost certainly affects brand value. Whe ...

Regular Marketing is Important, and Existing Clients Are One of the Best Sources of Referrals.  Here's How to Get the Best Return on Marketing Investment.  Ed Mendlowitz regularly fields questions from readers at CPA Trendlines.  Recently he opined on the importance of regular marketing.  One tip:  leverage your existing clients for referrals.  Specifically, he adds:   ...

Six Initial Public Offerings Seek to Raise $1.1 Billion  The IPO market is set for its biggest week since Facebook Inc.'s FB +4.98% troubled offering in May, with Manchester United Ltd. and the operator of Outback Steakhouse among those scheduled to hit the tape, reports the Wall Street Journal.   More: ...

Bond King Says Stocks are Dead:  Believes Consistent, Annual Returns Are "Thing of the Past."  On the Horizon?  Inflation. “The cult of equity is dying,” Bill Gross wrote in his August Investment Outlook, the Wall Street Journal's Market Beat blog reports.    “Like a once bright green aspen turning to subtle shades of yellow then red in the Colorado fall, investors’ impressions of ‘stocks for the long run’ ...

CPA Firms Emphasize Privacy Efforts as Pressure Mounts From Regulatory Requirements, Professional Standards, and Client Expectations  CPA firms and other businesses that maintain confidential client data are vulnerable to external and internal threats, including inadvertently leaking data and being targeted by hackers, reports the Journal of Accountancy.  Seven steps can help businesses assess which data ne ...

A $450B Annual Tax Gap Prompts Treasury to Pursue Aggressive Compliance Techniques Blake E. Christian explains why the IRS has an explicit focus and specific tactics. Here’s what to expect: increased regulation of tax professionals, more mandated disclosures, and an insistence on tax document matching. Plus, there will likely be an added focus on high-yield assessments. ...

Organizations with a Market Capitalization of Less than $300 Million may be Paying Higher Insurance Premiums Catastrophic risk is of increased concern to insurers, and small businesses without losses will likely face increased premiums of 10-20 percent on renewal next year. Why? Wildfires, cyber-crime, cloud computing risk, and workers compensation rates are some reasons insurers cite. ...

Next Year’s New Medicare Tax Provides Another Incentive to form an S Corporation  Investors often use S corporations to minimize self-employment and Medicare taxes. Next year's new 3.8% tax on net investment income provides another incentive to form an S corporation. Thomas Wechter, JD, discusses in this article at The Tax Insider the new rules that take effect in 2013. ...

Catastrophic Events and Consequences for Value Managing catastrophic risk exposure is much more difficult than managing continuous risk exposure, explains Aswath Damodaran.  Here’s how to incorporate the risk from catastrophes into valuation models. ...

A County Buys a Strip Mall Under Eminent Domain Process; at Issue is Whether Chairs and Tables Require Additional Tax   A Bankrate Tax Talk column at Fox Business News Personal Finance site considers a rather unusual case of a strip mall's sale:    ...

Tips for Family Businesses to Survive and Thrive When Tough Times Hit Can You Revive Your Distressed Family Business?  The first step to figuring that out, Steven F. Agran explains, is an objective assessment of cost structure.  What determines whether a business can be cash flow positive at current sales levels or even at lower levels, if sales continue to decline?  Find out here. ...

Reviewing and Revising Partner Agreements. In my prior firm, the review and revision of partner agreements was a process that happened every ten to fifteen years, if that often. I think that is pretty common in most firms. The problem is that firms change and evolve as do the partners and the environments that we practice in. Our agreements need to keep pace with that change. I continue to be amazed at the ...

When Do Too Many Active Shareholders Hurt Instead of Help? At Forbes, Lawrence Siff relates his conversations with CEOs of two family businesses, discusses the challenge of bringing in new leadership, and offers tips on how and when to go about it:  ...

Why The Black-Scholes Model Overvalues Conversion Options. The Black-Scholes method was the predominant model for many years, and was even endorsed by accounting rules prior to the introduction of FAS 157, even though it was never intended to be used for valuing complex securities or illiquid assets. Some have substituted lattice models or Monte Carlo simulation, making modifications or adjustment to attemp ...

The New York Times' Dealbook reports that after putting banks on watch four months ago, Moody’s Investors Service on Thursday cut the credit ratings of 15 large financial firms, in a move that could do lasting damage to their bottom lines and weigh on the markets. ...

Biotechnology Valuation: An Introductory Guide Biotechnology is producing quantum advances in medicine, but the specter of unforeseen consequences from treatments has brought with it a parallel growth in litigation.  Valuing biotechnology assets isn’t easy: generally accepted methods of discounted cash flows (DCF) and market comparison are sometimes difficult to apply in an industry rife with low probabilit ...

Smart Consultants Use Benchmarks to Add Insight and Increase Profits Business valuation professionals constantly use benchmarking tools to evaluate businesses that we determine values for—but we aren’t always as diligent in using benchmarking tools to evaluate and to manage our own consulting businesses. Dave Cooper explains why this should be a priority. ...